An average of 144 billion emails are sent on a daily basis. This makes email marketing one of the most effective channels for reaching out to customers. However, email marketing is not an automatic tool for ensuring conversion rates. Many people have to go through tons of emails on a daily basis. This means you need to do things differently in order to make sure your email gets read.

The key to a successful email marketing campaign lies in effective strategies that will grab your reader’s attention. Are you wondering how you can make your marketing emails more effective? Here are 10 techniques you can use.

1. Subject lines and their length

According to email statistics, around 35% of people decide whether to read email depending on the subject line. This means your choice of subject lines is crucial if you want to have your emails opened.

Emails with long subject lines are hardly opened, however catchy they may be. Over 40% of emails are opened on mobile devices. This means long subject lines will be cut, thereby failing to serve their main purpose (which is to attract people to open the mail). The ideal length for a subject line should be 3-4 words.

2. Mobile optimized content

Because so many emails are opened on mobile devices. This means that in order for you to engage customers who are viewing your email on phone, you should first ensure the content is mobile optimized. It’s annoying for people to have to scroll HTML emails from left to right just because the content couldn’t fit their phone screen.

So how should you do this? You can convert your HTML email into a one column template and ensure important buttons are centered for easy clicks. If you are not an IT guru you can make use of thousands of freelancers who can optimize your pre-existing email templates.

3. Email length and wording

Email length is crucial if you want to keep the attention of your reader to the end. Always remember that your email is not the only one going to be read. There are always others waiting in line, so yours needs to be as catchy as possible. Some people fall into the trap of writing long emails because they want to get down too much information. The best email length should not exceed 200 words (ideally, it should be between 50-150 words).

Some people want to pass their email off as professional by including sophisticated words. This reduces the readability of your email. It is advised you use 3rd grade English, with short sentences which make for a fast and effective read. You can also hire a freelancer to write the content for you.

4. Only send necessary emails

The one thing everyone fears is to have their emails labelled as SPAM (especially when you’ve worked hard to come across as legit). Many consumers resort to labelling email as spam whenever they are receiving too many, or the content does not engage them. Statistics indicate that 69% of people will decide whether it’s spam solely due to the subject line.

Having your emails marked as spam by consumers can blacklist your IP address. This will affect other emails you send out afterwards. To avoid this, send necessary emails without “spammy” subject lines. Also remember that whenever you’re starting out, it’s better to send small batches of emails to people you’re confident with.

5. Have better ending lines

So far, we’ve stressed the subject line and the content of the email. Statistics indicate that end lines can also be important when it comes to marketing. The manner in which you sign off can have a considerable impact on customer engagement. People are more likely to respond to an email that has been signed off with “thanks in advance”, as opposed to any other sign off.

6. Personalize email without using your customer’s name

In this day and age, where fishing for people’s details online is a problem, many are wary of receiving an email with their details from sources they don’t remember subscribing to. Unless there’s a good reason for doing so, there’s no need to put their details on the email. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t personalize your emails, but you can do so in ways that do not make people feel intruded upon.

If you are running email marketing campaigns, it’s safer to steer clear of the user’s name or other details (but you can always customize the email details to their specific preferences).

7. Know when to send your emails

It’s important to know the best time for sending emails. Studies indicate that if you want the highest number of click-throughs, the period between 8pm to midnight is the best for sending out your emails. You don’t want to be sending your emails during the day when every other company is sending out theirs. For people to open your email, you’ll need to have it appear as the only marketing email in their inbox.

It has also been found that emails which are sent during the weekends tend to perform better than those sent during weekdays.

8. Add visuals to your emails

According to research, emails with images tend to get higher responses than those in plain text. An email with a combination of images and text results in higher engagement levels still. If your emails have been plain all along, it’s time to spice them up.

9. Use a personal tone to your customers

Okay, now you know the best length of your email, subject line and how to present it to your customers (with images, of course). Now it’s time to work on tone, because the wrong one can be very off-putting. It’s always recommended that you use a personal tone in email campaigns.

This might be hard if you have a huge list of people with diverse interests. In order to accomplish this, you will have to segment your list of people and write personalized emails to people in each list. Remember to keep your content short and interesting.

10. Conduct A/B tests for your emails

If you want to have the best click-through list, you should do A/B testing for all your emails. You might test aspects such as which content leads to more engagement, and times when people are more likely to reply to your email. There is a lot of software you can use for conducting A/B tests, such as Litmus.

Email marketing is crucial for any business. This means you have to be quite careful about how you run your email marketing campaigns. Just like any aspect of your business, you should be ready to strategize, plan and analyze your data in order for your company to have successful campaigns.

Do you have any suggestions for improving email marketing? Share with us in the comments section below!